IT Reprint Hindawi

Reprint and OA content. Emboldened by the suc- role in establishing the Open Access Hindawi cess of the hybrid model, Hindawi moved Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA; to an all-OA approach for its journals by www.oaspa.org). According to OASPA, the 2007. By the end of that year, the company group’s aim is to support and “represent Publishing: announced a joint initiative with SAGE the interests of Open Access (OA) journal Publications to publish a collection of OA publishers globally in all scientific, tech- journals, leveraging Hindawi’s production nical, and scholarly disciplines … through A Working technology and SAGE’s editorial expertise. exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, edu- OA Model Keys to Rapid Growth cation, and the promotion of innovation.” The move to an all-OA model has been Who’s the Customer? paying off. Paul Peters, Hindawi’s head by NANCY DAVIS KHO | of business development, says the com- In traditional scholarly publishing, the pany now publishes 275 journals, about customer has been a library subscriber to In the 3 years since academic pub- 10% of which are carried on the SAGE- journals. “We were terrible at dealing with lisher Hindawi Publishing Corp. moved Hindawi Access to Research platform. libraries,” says Peters. “Being in Egypt, to a strictly open access (OA) publishing Reflecting the growth in the number you just can’t send a sales team over to model, the perception of OA has shifted. of journals published is a commensurate talk to them about our journal offerings.” Once viewed as a radical upending of tra- jump in submissions. “We have received But he says Hindawi retooled its focus ditional subscription models designed to 21,000 submissions over the past 12 on who the paying customers were and move academic research more quickly months and are now averaging about designed its processes to serve them. Au- and cheaply into the hands of readers, OA 2,000 a month,” says Peters. “Of those, thors of the articles published in Hindawi has edged closer to mainstream accept- we’ve published 7,500 articles in 2010, journals pay an article processing charge ance by publishers and authors. Peter compared to 3,650 articles last year.” The (APC) for their research to be distributed Suber, who publishes the SPARC Open most widely read of the Hindawi journals, freely; the APC ranges from zero for pub- Access Newsletter, says, “OA journal pub- including the Journal of Biomedicine lication in newer journals to $1,500 for lishers were once peripheral; now they’re and Biotechnology and the EURASIP the most popular publications. a sizable minority.” While controversy Journal on Wireless Communications and “We really focus on trying to provide remains around OA’s long-term implica- Networking, receive nearly 1,000 submis- the best possible author services at Hin- tions for scholarship and publishing, sions each year. dawi,” says Peters. Because authors are Hindawi’s recent growth and strategic Peters sees Hindawi’s stringent peer- motivated to have their research distrib- initiatives show that OA is here to stay. review process and a rejection rate that uted as quickly as possible, the company Hindawi opened its doors in 1997 as a hovers at about 60%–65% as proof of OA’s has made the speed of publication a commercial publisher of peer-reviewed long-term viability. “When OA was get- key metric. “We’ve reduced the average journals, covering a range of academic ting started, there were two camps: pub- amount of time from acceptance to final disciplines under a traditional subscrip- lishers with a long-term vision for OA publication from 75 to 35 days,” says tion model. Founders Ahmed Hindawi publishing, like BioMed Central, Public Peters. “Our goal is to have it under a and Nagwa Abdel-Mottaleb decided to Library of Science [PLoS], and Hindawi, month by the end of 2010.” set up company headquarters in Cairo in and those who were in it to make a quick Another factor that appeals to authors part because it would let them draw on a buck,” he says. “Authors were being bom- is Hindawi’s in-house production services, population of highly skilled employees at barded with offers to publish, but over teamed by a staff of 120. “For instance, a relatively low cost and enable them to time, the second group of publishers got we are starting to publish figures and keep all production services for their a bad reputation for quality. Luckily, they mathematical equations as scalable vec- journals in-house. seem to be fading into the background.” tor graphics for the online version of our By 2004, the company began experi- The importance of establishing indus- articles, which enables us to maintain a menting with a hybrid OA model that try standards for high-quality OA peer consistent look across different browsers enabled journals to include subscription review led Hindawi to play a founding and screen sizes,” says Peters. Valid Concerns About OA comprise about 1%–2% of Hindawi’s total In the world of STM publishing, the idea revenue. of shifting the cost from subscribers to The University of Calgary was one of researchers under the OA model continues Hindawi’s first institutional members, join- to provoke controversy. “There are certainly ing the program in 2008. Andrew Waller, some valid concerns around the relative licensing and negotiation librarian and OA publication costs to the cost of performing librarian at the university, says, “We felt it the research itself,” says Peters. “In well- was a fit because we had a fair number of funded fields like biotech, chemistry, and faculty members publishing in Hindawi engineering, the APC is a tiny percentage of journals, and this just made it easier to the overall research cost,” what Suber char- administer.” At the same time, the univer- acterizes as “vanishingly small, considering sity set up a central OA fund, out of which the average National Institutes of Health … the institutional membership was paid, to research grant is $700,000.” But in disci- cover publishing costs for its faculty. is the speed of the peer-review process, and plines such as mathematics and social sci- Peters acknowledges that the program we are taking active steps to try to reduce ence (and Hindawi is just starting to move has its limitations, primarily in the form of the delays as much as possible,” says Peters, into the latter), the APC may be prohibitive. fluctuating costs from year to year. Once a most recently with the introduction of the And unlike BioMed Central, Hindawi does library has paid for an institutional mem- International Scholarly Research Network not offer reduced APC pricing to researchers bership, researchers have no barriers to sub- (ISRN.) It’s a series of peer-reviewed, OA in emerging markets who may be even less mit their work, and the increased submis- journals designed to provide a fast peer- able to afford it. Matthew Cockerill, manag- sions drive up the annual membership cost. review process for all submitted manu- ing director of BioMed Central, says, However, Waller doesn’t feel this is a scripts; the goal is to winnow the average “Access to information is a real problem in major disadvantage. “In the library world, review time down to 3 or 4 weeks. developing countries, but the rapid spread we’re used to dealing with annual subscrip- Under the ISRN model, which Hindawi of low cost digital technology, together with tion prices changing. If I calculate the first started to use only a few months ago, open access, is really helping to address money I pay to all our OA publishers and a topic-specific editorial board of 100– that.” He adds, “We needed to ensure that divide it by the number of journals we 300 members is convened; members must publication fees would not be a barrier for receive, costs [with OA] are in line if not commit to performing the initial review of these researchers, hence the automatic cheaper than if I’d been paying for subscrip- a submission within 2 weeks of receipt. waiver scheme.” tions.” Waller also points out that under the Each new submission is reviewed sepa- Suber makes the point that Hindawi’s Hindawi institutional membership model, rately by five editors who each provide their article processing charges, which top out at an institution with a rising number of sub- initial feedback. After reviewing these $1,500, tend to be a bit lower than those of missions will actually pay less in any given reports, editors decide whether to accept BioMed Central. “And it’s not true that the year because the flat fee is based on the the manuscript. only choice is between high and low APCs,” prior year’s total submissions. The company also continues to move he says. “Seventy percent of OA journals The jury is still out on the long term. into new fields such as social sciences and charge no fees of any kind.” In Hindawi’s Author Richard Poynder, who writes exten- is acquiring journals as they come up for case, about 10% of the journals carry no fee sively about OA, says via email, “Open sale; three new titles were acquired in the for article processing; BioMed Central also access is set to become the dominant way of past year. charges nothing for submissions to 10 of its publishing scholarly papers, but there is no Peters says the last 6 months have been publications. evidence that it will reduce costs and so particularly encouraging for proponents of One way that Hindawi is tackling the solve the fundamental affordability problem the OA model.

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